General

By Dan Auld San Diego, December 4, 2011 — Will Rush Limbaugh save the solar industry? It looks that way for Toni Lynch in Allentown, Pennsylvania and Spiro Basho in Hicksville, New York. That’s a hoot, given Limbaugh’s well-known antipathy toward anything remotely resembling renewable energy. Limbaugh has repeatedly taken to the airwaves to slam […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington DC, December 6, 2011—The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has rolled out the latest, and fifth, of its Future Of series of studies of U.S. energy policy, this one focused on the interstate electric transmission grid. The massive transmission tome contains little that’s new to anyone who has followed this subject. Included […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., December 2, 2011 — Think the tension between electric reliability and environmental protection is just theoretical hand-waving? Debra Raggio, assistant general counsel at GenOn Energy, the non-utility generator formerly known as Mirant, will tell you you’re wrong, and she can back it up. Raggio told her tale of regulatory Catch-22 […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., November 17, 2011 — Let’s stipulate: Texas Gov. Rick Perry is a doofus. I’ve elsewhere characterized him as “a stuffed shirt, in an empty suit, talkin’ through his hat.” I was being kind. In his recent debate “Oops!” moment, Perry was able to name only two of the three federal […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., October 18, 2011 — Remember the flap about inconsistencies between the Energy Information Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey over shale gas estimates for the Marcellus formation? Forget about it. According to a new paper from the Washington think tank Resources for the Future, there’s no discrepancy at all: the […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., October 17, 2011 – To describe Progress Energy’s Crystal River nuclear power plant on Florida’s west coast as a problem unit is a substantial understatement. Commissioned in 1977, the 838-MW Babcock & Wilcox pressurized water reactor has been one of nuclear’s Poor Pitiful Pearls for the past few years. Currently, […]

By Carl Zichella Oct. 5, 2011 — The Obama administration’s Rapid Response Team for Transmission (RRTT), today announced a plan to accelerate the permitting and construction of seven transmission lines that are forecast to create thousands of operational and construction jobs. These projects are intended to serve as pilot demonstrations of streamlined federal permitting and […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., September 29, 2011 — A story in the Wall Street Journal recently – about a Chinese wind firm pirating U.S.-owned software that controls wind turbines – reminded me of how, in the 1980s, China stole a coal mine from legendary U.S.-Russian oilman Armand Hammer. The moral of the story, for […]

By Steven Aftergood Updated below When the Central Intelligence Agency established a Center on Climate Change and National Security in 2009, it drew fierce opposition from congressional Republicans who disputed the need for an intelligence initiative on this topic.  But now there is a different, and possibly better, reason to doubt the value of the Center:  It […]

By Kennedy Maize Washington, D.C., September 20, 2011 — Having failed to implement the provisions of the 2005 Energy Policy Act aimed at facilitating interstate electric transmission, the Department of Energy now wants to punt the problem to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Whether FERC wants this political black spot isn’t clear, but in any […]